So, the year is almost at an end. Most of us here have been writing for several years and can say we've learned a lot over that time. But was was the most important thing you learned about writing or your as a writer in 2024? And even if you're a brand new writer, still share what knowledge you're taking away from having been a writer in 2023? I think I've learned to be have more patience with myself as a writer. And spending more time on something if it simply needs more time spent on it. This isn't something that comes easy for me. I want to be good and I want to be fast; who doesn't, right? But I'm after something more than being good and fast, and there are other ways to reach those goals. What did you learn in 2023? And do you think it will help you as a writer in 2024?
I think the biggest thing for me is learning my preferred style, I guess is how I'd phrase it. I don't think I've ever been afraid to write certain ways, but after reading a few pivotal books this year, I kind of embraced the parts of me that want to go really, really far from what I used to write. I've gone from being a semi-romance writer to sci-fi/horror and the change is ridiculously fun. I think moving into 2024 with this in mind will only expand my creativity even further.
Cool topic... Although I didn't get to write as many entries for the short/flash contests as I had planned to in 2023 I still feel like I learned a lot from each of the ones I did get finished and entered. I've mainly been focusing on expressing ideas using less words. I've also been working on writing more rounded-out plots for short stories instead of just writing single-scene stories. It's been challenging to combine the two approaches into the short-length story formats but it's been producing some winners so I'm pleased with my progress this year. Early this spring, as I was really getting into this whole approach and writing for the contests here, both my mom and my oldest friend passed away just as few weeks apart. Mom's was rather expected but my friends death was particularly hard, and I was afraid to write anything for months afterward, knowing what it would likely be as I was a wreck to be honest...so I just didn't write anything at all. When I finally felt the desire and the possibility I could write something not mired in sadness and depression, I first picked up something I'd started a while ago titled The Laugh Track and finally fleshed out the middle and ending. When that won, and got such positive feedback (Thank you again!) it inspired me to write Cookie Monster, which won recently also. Now I'm feeling very excited about the new 2024 prompts and looking forward to getting more entries in next year than the last. Lesson learned: Time heals all wounds.
Basically I have been a 'pantser' in that I could have done more in the way of preparation. Going forward I will need a more structured approach.
Thought-provoking question. - Write. Allocate time and stick to it. I write/research/study on average 6hrs per day - I learned how to plot a book by blocking the story before you start. My writing was linear. It still is to some degree, and I'm working to overcome that in Dreams 2. - The plot is the engine of the story, but the characters drive it. (your plot might be brilliant, but the reader will lose interest if your characters don't engage and connect .) - Action -don't dwell. - Don't internalise too much. Action through dialogue. Dialogue beats. - If you want to make money write to genre. I bought Publisher Rocket, and I can analyze which categories sell and which don't. I'm making the necessary tweaks to ensure my series, Dreams, conforms to reader expectations. You can also analyse the competition. I find this useful when I read this especially useful when I read the 'sample'. I also learned, judging by the sample's first few pages, that some best-selling authors are not necessarily great writers. Title Type Author Age ABSR # Of Pages KWT Price DY Sales MO Sales
Maybe not so much learned, but re-learned. 1. The first draft is never as bad as I think. 2. The difference between wrapping up a novel where the 'step' had been found and starting a new one is jarring, makes me feel like a complete beginner all over again. The last 20,000 words are so much easier to write than the first 20,000. 3. If a scene is hard to write, consider adding something to it. I'm an underwriter by far. 4. Important to lay down those words. An unfinished story is a real shame.
This year I've learned to slow it down just a tad, and to focus a little bit more on characters rather than dominating stories with plot. I've learned to keep to my writing schedule, as it's working for me and producing results. It might sound strange, but I have also learned to stop doubting myself. I'm not really a confident person, but I truly believe that I am pretty good at writing, and I am only going to get better as long as I keep at it. Hope that doesn't sound arrogant or anything. I just feel good about what I've been writing this year. Looking ahead to 2024, I want to submit more stories to contests. I want to write longer short stories as I've mostly been writing flash. Lastly, I hope to come up with a firm idea for my next novel. Usually I have something in my back pocket, even when I'm in the process of writing something else. I have no idea what's coming after this one, and that's weird. I want the next idea already so I can start taking notes on it !
I started writing in early 2019 but I was never proud of what I wrote. I wrote novels and they thrilled me to some extent, but I didn't view my works as anything even remotely worthy. Hell, I didn't even see myself as a writer. Mostly, I viewed myself as an idiot who's trying to act like a writer. 2023 changed that. I made a big shift from novels to short stories. I made sure to submit a short story to the contests here every single month. I honestly didn't plan to it at first. But after I made my first submission, I was basically hooked. I committed to submit every single month. And it wasn't even to win. I didn't think I was capable of winning. I kept writing for the sake of making it to the end of the year just so I could really say that I tried. Yes, really. That was my mindset. Early on, I had already decided that I would loose. But this isn't what happened at all. I won. Not once, but three times. I mean, my first few submissions weren't doing well at all, but this didn't stop me. Because I had that weird mindset, failure didn't really bother me. I expected it. So, I kept submitting every month. And I also put my stories up for review. A lot of the people here helped me (you know who you are; I don't need to mention you) and regularly replied to my workshop posts. It took a few tries but one particular entry finally made many of my problems obvious. It was a given from there. I started to do better, so I also started to believe that maybe I could actually win. And I did. Yeah. It's been a year and a half. That commitment transformed my writing. I'm not saying that I'm great but I'm a lot better. I'm finally not afraid to show others my work. I finally like what I write. I see my recent stories as worthy of something. So, I guess, my mindset has been transformed as well. That's just as important as writing skill. Ultimately, being part of this community achieved this. I could never do this alone. Being near other writers gave me a sense of validity. And participating in these contests gave me a realistic goal I could commit towards. I've said all this stuff before, I'm sure, but I truly do mean it. If it wasn't for these contests, I'm not sure of where I'd be today. Maybe I'd still be the same as I was in the beginning of the year. I'm truly grateful for what I got. Words simply cannot express just how integral the community has been for me this year. It's the first year in my writing where I feel like I truly made progress. That's spectacular. I never even dreamed of it. If you told me I'd be like this today, I'd call you a liar. So, okay, what's the most important thing I learned in 2023? Perhaps, it's that I can write something worthy too. And that if I keep going. maybe, just maybe, I too can make a truly spectacular story one day. The quest for that continues. All of this was just progress towards that goal.
Being PERSISTENT with my writing in general. Immediately family frown upon my own journey. Definitely a learning curve and slow going but I'm getting there
I saw the title and immediately thought, "Persistence pays." Came on to add that thought aaaand there was my sister in carrying bags there before me.
Well I just won the December poetry contest on your sister site after being convinced I would come last.. So I just learnt that I can write poetry too. For fiction writing, I've learnt to be more concise. And to use shorter sentences, not to have super long ones, like this sentence (as an example)
I'm a week late for the end of 2023, but late is pretty normal for me. I'm not sure I learned anything life changing, but I discovered a few neat things, like the fact that Scrivener and Grammarly both rock. The 160K novel I wrote most of this year jumps around town from scene to scene, and having access to labeled scenes in a file tree on the side made it 1000% easier than one long Word document. Scrivener sucks for SPAG, though. Thankfully, the free version of Grammarly plugged right in and fixed most of that. I know my rules, but I make plenty of typos and screw up homonyms now and then. Grammarly will significantly cut down my mom's work later on, lol. She's my SPAG editor (as well as a great beta.) As for my actual writing, I guess I learned that I'm better at writing flash fiction than I thought I was, as well as horror, apparently. I've enjoyed it, too. I've written a couple of shorts that were worth reading over the years, one that's actually pretty good even, I think. I haven't really written many, though, because I never felt it was my medium. That was fine with me. I don't really love short stories, anyway. I go through a collection or two a year, usually, but haven't been blown away by most of them. I've found gems, and I have a few favorites, but I'm just not that into them. Anyway, there's a monthly contest on the other WF with a 650 word max, and I wrote a ghost story in July that really impressed some people. I'm very proud of it, but I'm not entirely sure how I pulled it off. I'm still trying to recapture what I did there. I've written and entered three more since to somewhat mixed reviews, very hit or miss, in fact. One or two judges will love it, and another judge will obliterate it in their review. I still placed with two of the three, and more importantly, I like what I've been writing. Why almost every short or flash piece I write turns out bleak AF, I have no idea, but they do. I even wrote this last horror-esque entry while listening to joyful Christmas music. I was in a great mood, and it still turned out about as dark as a story can get, lol. Going into 2024, I'm going to keep writing flash pieces. If I can finish a first draft of my WIP soon, I think I'm going to start a ghost story I've been outlining for my next book. Hopefully I can take some of what's been creeping people out in the shorts and reproduce it in a full length novel. We'll see.
I've had the same thing happen a couple of times. All it takes is one person not "getting it" to knock you off what seemed to be a sure podium placement. Nothing you can really do but try not to overthink it and just move on. As you noted, the important thing is that you know you're writing good stuff. It does go the other way sometimes, too. I placed third in one contest by a hair, and after reviewing the scores and comments, I realized that it was because one of the judges took a clever turn of phrase as a grammatical error in the story that ended up placing fourth. I'll add one more to the things I've learned - to lean into my strengths more. And I'm glad that you're doing the same. You really are quite skilled at writing literary horror, and I am sure there are many more quality pieces to come.
I should do this in more detail than I did in my earlier post. I didn't write as much as I did in the couple of previous years, though I did a bunch of scenes and a few freewrites. The freewrites were aimed at developing more depth and subtlety in my character writing. I've also done a lot of development in Scrivener and in Plottr, each with its own focus. In Scrivener it was mostly to work out the ideas underlying the stories, that go into creating the layers of symbolism and meaning. And in Plottr it was all about developing my understanding of story structure. And I've done a lot of analysis of stories, shows and movies aimed at understanding how they work: Spielberg's autobiographical narrative about becoming a director and going to Hollywood, hidden in Jaws and Close Encounters A pretty in-depth analysis of themes, act structure, and symbolism in Breaking Bad A massive preliminary study into lyric poetry and Romanticism Looking into Homer's Odyssey, mostly aimed at understanding what the gods of yore represented A study into slasher flicks The Transcendent Writer characters in Stephen King's work Characters in King and Spielberg What can be learned from Buffy?—special emphasis on character arcs Examining the writing in two of my favorite hardboiled detective stories I thought my Iron Man analysis was done last year, but apparently it was the year before. Wow, how time flies!* There, that makes it look like I accomplished something, since I hardly wrote anything all freakin' year! Though I guess I really tapered off from writing somewhere in the latter part of the year. I think I was still going fairly strong early on. * Turns out that was actually 2 years ago. Time goes into hyperdrive!
When it comes to reading and critiquing other people's works, less is often more. It's tempting to go line by line and point out all the mistakes someone made. But I found it more effective to pause and say, "Okay, is there one thing in their writing that, if they changed, would make the biggest impact?" For example, you get a piece that has a lot of spelling mistakes, the characters are not well-established, and the story is coming off as a bunch of events strung together instead of a cohesive thing. Which one of these things do you focus on? If I point all of them out, I might as well just say, "You did everything wrong" and leave it at that. Instead, I pick one that would make the biggest impact. In this case, I would argue it's spelling. So when I do go back and write my critique, sure, I might point out the other things, but I'm really going to make the spelling the beginning and end of my critique. Because that's going to make the biggest difference not just in this piece, but in pieces moving forward.
In thinking about things I've learned over the last year, I realized something— I often try writing several beginnings for a story, until I get one that has what I call the flow to it. Meaning everything is flowing together and moving forward nicely, and it seems like I'll be able to keep on going with it with no problems. As a result of trying several times, I sometimes end up with one beginning that's way better than the others. Then when I get down to the nitty gritty and have to write the rest of it, I can't match the quality level of it. And I don't want to write it if it can't be that good. It's basically a form of perfectionism I guess, though I'm not really a perfectionist—not in any other ways. I don't know, maybe it's ok to have a really sweet beginning, then the level drops for a while, with hopefully a few spikes where it hits that level again. Or maybe I need to re-write the beginning again so it's more at my everyday writing level.
I, too, play around with beginnings quite a bit. Like a lot! After writing just the beginning of a short story I was submitting, I made my first sale and it was a big one. I have found this also to have worked for other short stories I've since published. I'm talking the first two to three pages. And like a complete overall. And sometimes it takes me a few tries. I've become comfortable with redoing everything. And sometimes where a story starts makes all the difference. I've done this with my novel-in-progress as well. I've played around with the first three chapters in my story the most, again, sometimes a complete overhaul. But every time I do this, I think my story gets better. It sounds like you have some good writer instincts at play so listen to them. I'm not sure what it means that the level drops. Do you mean the quality of writing drops? Because that's not something that you want any dips in. Our writing and stories always carry the potential to be our best work. I know we, as writers, go through an emotional rollercoaster of loving and hating whatever we're working on at the moment. At least that's how it seems to be for me. But think of it like this -- If you can write a killer beginning for a story and you feel you've produced some good quality writing, why would the quality of writing not continue throughout your story? If the quality is there for part of it, it's really hard for me to imagine it's not going to always be there. And this doesn't matter how many times you write the beginning or anything else. You always want to produce quality work. And it seems like you can do that. So, of course, you want to continue to do that. And maybe you actually are or are on the right path.
Thanks for that, I appreciate it. I think it's because I've become so familiar woth the beginning, and worked through the problems several times. And then when I write the next part, I'm laying down my first draft for the rest of it. Maybe I need to just work through it, and it will improve in editing and revision? Oh, I've had another thought on it now. I'm talking specifically about one story now—the Beastseekers. I had written a couple of beginnings for it (all in the workshop thread) and then I saw the movie Stand by Me and read the Stephen King short story on which it was based, called The Body. It's a sweet beautifully-written nostalgic look back at childhood, probably largely autobiographical (at least in some ways) for King. And my next beginning was strongly influenced by that. But it's sort of at odds with the story. I mean, it's a story about some teenagers fighting monsters in the woods, and here I'm writing the beginning like a nostalgic coming-of-age story with beautiful prose. I think at least a big part of the problem is that I can't mix those two things. It needs to be one or the other. And honestly, it needs to be a teenagers fighting monsters in the woods story. There can be some nostalgia (that's actually a big part of what made me want to write it, nostalgia for the seventies when I was young). But I think the beginning sets up a different kind of story. Many of my early inspirations and influences were pulp writers. I think maybe I need to stick to a more fast-paced, pulp-style approach, more action than beautiful prose. Maybe one day I'll do the kind of story that lets me write like that.
@Xoic -- we can write however we want to white whenever we want to write. That's the beauty of this artwork. You might find your style to be a mix of the two. It reminds me of a novel I read in the late 90s title "Twelve." It has nothing to do with the movie the shares the same title. I first read a chapter of it in a literary prior to the novels release. It stood out because of its style which seems to be a combination of the two styles you are working with and maybe a bit of the subject matter you're working with, though, there are no monsters in this one. I can't remember the author's name, but I'm sure I could find it if you're interested. Good luck!
That is true. We live in the age of mix-and-match genres, when it's pretty common to mash together three or four different ones, or sometimes even more. I'll definitely keep that in mind, but I do think it needs another beginning, for a few other reasons.
Hmm, an idea - if you don't mind, love? That story beginning you like that doesn't go with the rest of the story.. Can you tweak the rest? Maybe instead of the story solely being about monsters write it as a nostalgic look back at the summer. Perhaps the mc is thinking of a summer when they were having a wonderful time, or the last summer they were kids because every summer after that one they had to work?
I've done something similar to myself. It was my first attempt at a novel many years ago, and in a lot of ways, I didn't know what I was doing. I would read back through when I couldn't write something new or when I'd put it away long enough that I needed the reminder. The problem was, as I read through over and over, I'd edit and edit and attempt to perfect every phrase. Then I'd try to write something new, and I would hate it. It wasn't up to the caliber of the rest of the piece. Well, of course it wasn't. It hadn't been polished a hundred times until it shone. I did eventually abandon that whole project, but before that, I discovered that if I wanted to make any progress at all, I had to just write the story and trust that I could spiff it up later. It worked. I did finally got stuck completely, but that was because I'm just not a discovery writer. Maybe I'll try to outline the rest of that story and finish it someday. It's going to be hell trying to match the voice of that piece after all these years.
Hey Moon Child, thanks for the input. I like the ideas, but I've already got a battle plan in place. I wasn't looking for suggestions or ideas, just talking about stuff I learned last year, and problems I ran into.
It's good to know other people have experienced it too. My plan is to do a new beginning, ditch the Stand by Me stuff, and actually go back to something more like the first attempt I posted in here. That had a really nice feel and flow to it.
